Веха истории

[tijd]

Первый раз про возможность импичмента я писал в феврале 2017. Ныне мечта Максин Уотерс сбылась.

"History will remember those who were willing to speak truth to power. Yes, I called for Trump’s impeachment early. This is our country. Our foremothers and our forefathers shed their blood to build and defend this democracy. I refuse to have it undermined. I wholeheartedly support this resolution. I'm proud that in the final analysis justice will have been served in America and Donald Trump will have been impeached."
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/he-has-shown-us-who-he-is-maxine-waters-flattens-trump-and-gop-defenders-to-applause-from-the-house-floor/

SCREAMINGGGGG pic.twitter.com/dlhnwvbHvJ
- R. Eric Thomas (@oureric) December 18, 2019

Воспользуемся моментом, чтобы проведать персонажей ранних сообщений из января-февраля 2017.


QAnon conspiracy theorists have trading cards now. pic.twitter.com/xdDJ4hgAYn
- Will Sommer (@willsommer) October 15, 2019

Генерал "Миша" Флинн прогорел, наняв дурного адвоката.

“The defendant’s motion is not a search for Brady material. It is a fishing expedition in hopes of advancing conspiracy theories related to the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The government has already provided any evidence that could reasonably be construed as favorable and material for the defendant at sentencing. Accordingly, the motion should be denied.”
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592/gov.uscourts.dcd.191592.122.0_2.pdf

В ложном предвкушении от разоблачений расследовании Горовица и результатов запроса несуществующих секретных материалов ФБР, адвокат предсказывала, что судья проделает "rearranging anatomy" с Ван Граком, прокурором из команды Мюллера. В результате подверглась подобной операции сама.

Manipulative Methods. @SidneyPowell1 explains how the Dems & Deep State are creating false stories and exploiting the media in their failing attempt to overthrow @realDonaldTrump. #AmericaFirst #MAGA #Dobbs pic.twitter.com/ybHJt8e33x
- Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) December 11, 2019

Долгая история Флинна завершится в январе 2020, когда ему будет наконец вынесен приговор.

A federal judge on Monday rejected Michael Flynn’s attacks against the FBI and the Justice Department, setting a long-delayed sentencing for President Trump’s former national security adviser for Jan. 28.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/michael-flynns-sentencing-set-for-jan-28-after-judge-rejects-his-attacks-on-the-fbi-justice-department/2019/12/16/269ae816-f4dd-11e9-a285-882a8e386a96_story.html



О Кристофере Стиле в докладе Горовица сообщаются дополнительные подробности, некоторые излишние - с угрозой для источников.

“I would LOVE a roadmap like this from the Russians or Chinese,” said one former intelligence official, referring to the report’s extensive description of how the Crossfire Hurricane team-named after the codeword given to the FBI’s Russia probe-determined the authenticity of certain intelligence.
The report includes FBI interview notes summarizing conversations with sources, revealing identifying details-one sub-source was described as being the subject of a YouTube video and several press reports, for example, while another was said to have “direct access to a particular former senior Russian government official”-and a description from another intelligence service of one of its former employees.
Experts said the depiction of sources and vetting in the report could pose problems for the U.S.’ information sharing relationships, and undermine the FBI’s recruitment efforts.
“Who wants to be a source if you can’t keep a secret?” said another former intelligence official. “It has a chilling effect and makes existing sources anxious about whether their identities will be maintained confidentially.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/inspector-general-report-russia-redactions-082471

В подтверждение репутации Стила рассказывается о его работе над раскрытием коррупции в ФИФА. За эту и другую полезную информацию Стилу в прошлом от ФБР выплатили около $100 тысяч.

Handling Agent 1 stated that in the summer of 2010 Steele introduced him to a contact who had allegedly obtained information about corruption in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). According to Handling Agent 1, but for Steele's assistance in arranging this meeting, the FBI would not have had the impetus to open the FIFA investigation in 2010. The lead FBI agent assigned to the FIFA matter told us that after Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup in September 2012, he approached Handling Agent 1 to request permission to examine possible corruption in the bidding process. According to the agent, Handling Agent 1 recalled his earlier interview with the contact that he met through Steele, retrieved a copy of the FBI FD-302 form memorializing the interview, and instructed the agent to open a case. The agent said that Steele's role in the FIFA investigation was limited to recommending to Handling Agent 1 that the FBI talk to the contact, whose information eventually proved valuable and helped predicate the opening of the investigation. The agent said he did not recall having any communication with Steele after the investigation's opening.
Additionally, Handling Agent 1 told us that Steele provided two other investigative leads to the FBI in connection with the FIFA investigation. First, in July 2011, Steele provided a report that summarized an alleged conversation between then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in which, according to the report, Putin acknowledged that a Russian oligarch had bribed the President of FIFA so that Russia could win the right to host the World Cup tournament in 2018. Second, in 2012, Steele introduced the FBI to two British officials with information concerning Russia's alleged efforts to bribe FIFA executives. Our review of Steele's Delta file also revealed that Steele furnished the FBI with a report dated June 2015 that quoted a Kremlin official as having admitted that the Kremlin bribed FIFA executives in order to secure rights to host the 2018 World Cup.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, as of December 2019, the FIFA investigation has resulted in 26 individual guilty pleas, 2 trial convictions, 4 corporate guilty pleas, and one corporate deferred prosecution agreement. Total forfeitures in the matter exceed $120 million. The OIG interviewed a prosecutor on the FIFA case who told us that Steele did not provide testimony in any court proceeding. Handling Agent 1 also told the OIG that Steele's information was not used to obtain any compulsory legal process in the
FIFA case. In addition to leads provided for the FIFA investigation, we were advised by the FBI that Steele furnished information about Russian oligarchs, some of whom were under investigation by the FBI. For example, we learned that, in October 2013, Steele provided lengthy and detailed reports to the FBI on three Russian oligarchs, one of whom was among the FBI's most wanted fugitives. According to an FBI document, an analyst who reviewed Steele's reporting on this fugitive found the reporting "extremely valuable and informative" and determined it was corroborated by other information that the FBI had obtained. <...>
Handling Agent 1 cited several examples of information from Steele that the FBI had been able to corroborate prior to the spring of 2016, such as corruption in FIFA's bid selection process, information regarding - Russian oligarchs, and corruption involving Yanukovych, but could not recall more. He also told the OIG that he was not aware of any information Steele provided prior to 2016 that had been shown to be false, inaccurate, or problematic. Handling Agent 1 said that the FBI found Steele's information to be valuable and that it warranted compensation. As a result, in 2014 and 2015, the FBI made five payments to Steele totaling $64,000. By the time the FBI closed Steele in November 2016, his cumulative compensation totaled $95,000, including reimbursement for expenses.
https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf



Информация о том, что "Kremlin bribed FIFA executives in order to secure rights to host the 2018 World Cup", не удивляет. Но интересно, почему по этому эпизоду до сих пор никто не подвергся уголовному преследованию. Личность Стила угадывается за давними сообщениями в прессе о картине Пикассо из запасников Эрмитажа, приподнесенной в качестве взятки Мишелю Платини.

The ex-MI6 source said: “The way this was done in Russia is that nothing was written down. Don’t expect me or anyone else to produce a document with Putin’s signature saying please X bribe Y with this amount in this way. He’s not going to do that.”
He went on: “Putin is an ex-intelligence officer. Everything he does has to be deniable,” and said the deals with voters “would have been strategic level but not state to state because of the need for deniability. That’s why the oligarchs were brought in.”
The ex-MI6 source said the intelligence about “collusion” between the Russian and Qatari bids centred on a visit by Igor Sechin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and the country’s most powerful oil magnate, to Doha in April 2010 to discuss the Yamal gas deal.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-sent-tame-oligarchs-on-deniable-missions-to-win-bid-90hcr2q9mch

Some of those “deniable” acts, according to the Sunday Times, included the handing out of high-priced art to FIFA voters, including a painting believed to be by Pablo Picasso to UEFA’s Platini and an additional landscape painting to FIFA voting member Michel D’Hooghe of Belgium. The latter painting was said to be wrapped in a paper bag and given to D’Hooghe by Vyacheslav Koloskov, a former FIFA vice president and Russia 2018 World Cup committee member.
D’Hooghe, who is reportedly being investigated along with four others by FIFA in a new corruption probe connected to the World Cup bids, confirmed the receipt of the painting to the Sunday Times, but noted he thought it held no monetary value. He also said it was “absolutely ugly” and added that he did not vote for Russia to win the 2018 bid.
Platini, however, denies the allegation that he was given a Picasso painting from Putin.
“Allegations in the Sunday Times relating to my actions in the 2018 and 2022 bidding processes are total fabrications,” Platini told CNN. “The matter has now been passed to my legal advisers.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2014/12/01/vladimir-putin-allegedly-gave-uefa-president-michel-platini-a-picasso-in-exchange-for-a-fifa-world-cup-vote/



Другим сюрпризом стало близкое знакомство Стила с любительницей футбола Иванкой Трамп, в лучших традициях фильмов про Джеймса Бонда.

Earlier this year Mr Steele told the inspector-general’s review, which examined the FBI’s investigation into Mr Trump’s alleged links with Russia, that he had been “favourably disposed” towards the Trump family before he compiled the dossier. <...>
It was claimed last night that Mr Steele met Ms Trump in 2007 when he sat next to her at a dinner for about 20 people hosted at Annabel’s, the exclusive Mayfair club. The source said that David Cameron, then leader of the opposition, and Strobe Talbott, then US deputy secretary of state, were speakers at the dinner, which was organised by a group of businessmen to discuss philanthropic funding of political research.
Mr Steele and Ms Trump became friends and discussed her finding appropriate business partners in Russia and China, it was claimed by the source who was familiar with past contact between the pair.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ivanka-trump-had-russia-business-talks-with-spy-christopher-steele-npm3kx8d3

In 2007, Ivanka Trump met Steele at a dinner and they began corresponding about the possibility of future work together, the source said. The following year, the two exchanged emails about meeting up near Trump Tower, according to several emails seen by ABC News. And the two did meet at Trump Tower according to the source. The inspector general’s report mentions a meeting with a "Trump family member" there. They suggest Ivanka Trump and Steele stayed in touch via emails over the next several years. In one 2008 exchange they discussed dining together in New York at a restaurant just blocks from Trump Tower. <...>
The inspector general's report, which was released publicly today, briefly references these past dealings. In his discussion with investigators from the inspector general’s office, Steele cited his past cordial relationship with Ivanka Trump as reason to believe that he was not biased against her.
"If anything he was 'favorably disposed' towards the Trump family before he began his research," he told the investigators, the report says.
Steele told investigators he met with "a Trump family member at Trump Tower and ‘been friendly’ with [the family member] for some years," even gifting the person "a family tartan," and that the idea he was biased against the family from the start was "ridiculous,’" according to the report.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dossier-author-chris-steele-met-ivanka-trump-years/story?id=67597270

Christopher Steele had sex with Ivanka Trump, in Trump Tower.

I've been saying this dude is basically James Bond for three years now, and I only used the word "basically" to mean "except for the banging supervillain-adjacent hot chicks part."

I stand corrected.
- Jack Walsh (@JackWaltimore) December 10, 2019

Отчет Горовица указывает, что расследование Пола Манафорта началось в январе 2016 - до того, как он присоединился к Трампу.

Manafort was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, supervised by the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) in the Department's Criminal Division, concerning millions of dollars Manafort allegedly received from the government of Ukraine. <...> That criminal investigation was opened by the FBI's Criminal Investigation Division in
January 2016, approximately 2 months before Manafort joined the Trump campaign as an advisor, and concerned allegations that Manafort had engaged in money laundering and tax evasion while acting as a political consultant to members of the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian politicians.

Ныне Манафорт отбился в суде от обвинений, выдвинутых штатом Нью-Йорк. Между его тюремным заключением и свободой теперь стоит только президентское помилование, ради которого, по всей видимости, и затевалась украинская афера, завершившаяся импичментом.

A New York judge on Wednesday threw out state fraud charges against Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, dealing a setback to efforts by the Manhattan district attorney to ensure Mr. Manafort would still face prosecution should Mr. Trump pardon him for his federal crimes.
Mr. Manafort was charged in Manhattan with mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies in March, shortly after he was sentenced in federal court for similar crimes. His lawyers argued that the state charges covered the same conduct for which Mr. Manafort had already been tried.
Justice Maxwell Wiley of the State Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday, ruling that the indictment violated a state law against double jeopardy, which says that a defendant may not be tried twice for the same offense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/nyregion/paul-manafort-ny-fraud-charges.html

Watch Devin Nunes die on the “paul Manafort did nothing wrong” hill. https://t.co/QDGnuS1ajN
- Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) December 18, 2019

Сообщение из досье Стила о поездке Майкла Коэна в Прагу было детальным: сообщались конкретное место и конкретные имена. Если бы оно подтвердилось, это было бы бомбой.

И отчет Мюллера, и отчет Горовица это сообщение как бы опровергают.

BuzzFeed had obtained copies of some of the Steele election reports during a meeting with the McCain Institute staff member and published them as part of an article titled "These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia." Included in this collection was Report 166, another report that previously had not been shared with the FBI. It included allegations that Trump attorney Michael Cohen had held secret discussions in Prague in late summer 2016 with representatives of the Kremlin and "associated operators/hackers," and that the "anti-Clinton hackers" had been paid by the "[Trump] team" and Kremlin. The FBI eventually concluded that these allegations against Cohen and the "Trump team" were not true.

Между тем издание McClatchy продолжает настаивать на правдивости независимо полученной информации про то, что мобильный телефон Коэна был засвечен около Праги. Загадка сохраняется.

"We quoted a total of five sources. Our sources cited information that signals from a cell phone owned by Cohen were detected in the vicinity of Prague and that, during that time frame, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a Russian remarking that Cohen was in the Czech capital. Our stories, while sensational, provided only hints - or breadcrumbs - suggesting that Cohen may have taken such a trip in late summer 2016. Without Cohen’s acknowledgement that he made such a trip, that he attended a clandestine meeting and without his description of what was discussed, the Cohen allegations appear to hit a dead end. There’s been no indication that Czech intelligence monitored or was aware of such a meeting, so it’s difficult to see how Special Counsel Robert Mueller could have proved this allegation even with an admission by Mr. Cohen."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/13/the-story-stands-mcclatchy-wont-back-off-its-michael-cohen-prague-reporting/



Коэн обратился с просьбой о снижении срока, но представители прокуратуры - против и написали, что он не был до конца правдив в своих показаниях. Это включает отрицание поездки в Прагу.

Cohen did not provide “substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of others," prosecutors said Thursday as they asked a Manhattan Federal Court judge to deny a request by the former Trump lawyer to reduce his three-year prison sentence.
”Cohen did not provide substantial assistance after his sentencing both based on the nature and scope of the information provided and because of substantial concerns about Cohen’s credibility as a witness,” Manhattan federal prosecutors said in court papers.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-cohen-jail-time-reduction-bid-20191220-tu3gauevjbefli6betk6kajkrq-story.html



Загадкой про Картера Пейджа остается: кто и с какой целью сообщил в прессу о прослушке в апреле 2017?

"Публикация в Washington Post заметки о прослушке Пейджа превратилась в умело расставленную мышеловку."
https://puppet-djt.livejournal.com/101817.html

А также: откуда у безработного Пейджа вдруг объявились сотни миллионов долларов?

An investment company based in Las Vegas, with oil and gas interests in the Middle East claimed that they received a commitment of more than three hundred million dollars from Carter Page’s Global Energy Capital after Page’s involvement in the Trump campaign.
The investment company, RD Heritage Group, claimed on their website in 2017 and 2018 that they they secured a capital commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars from Page and his company.
https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/energy-investment-group-claims-350m-capital-commitment-from-carter-page-after-2016-election-414fe7ce33e0